Exchange sites speed up

By BenefitsPro

The enrollment websites of more state-based public exchanges seemed to be working better Friday.

Reporters visited the sites of 15 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act individual exchange programs and found that, around 4 p.m. EDT, all were operating quickly most of the time.

The only site that was completely down was the Nevada exchange, and it came back up in a few minutes and worked quickly.

The New York state exchange, NY State of Health, shooed users away with a message stating that it was too busy and advising the users to try again later.

Having 12 of the 15 sites working reasonably smoothly seemed to be an improvement from Wednesday, when another organization, the Advisory Board, conducted a similar test and found that only seven of the 15 sites seemed to be working.

A number of sites repelled curious consumers by requiring visitors to create accounts simply to see lists of available plans. Others, such as the Nevada exchange site and the Vermont Health Connect site, let visitors check out a list of available plans enter a limited amount of data, such as age and income, and see a plan menu without creating an account.

When a reporter tried to get through the Cover Oregon individual coverage application screening process, the system crashed and returned an "Oracle Access Manager Operation Error."